fifth, sixth, seventh streets. i have strategic plans to build on the success and failure alike. it has been a challenge for a lot of different reasons. in january we decided after really analyzing the work that had been done, that we needed to do something dramatically different, that we have established the central market partnership, and it really builds upon the legacy of the previous mayor and community leaders that have been out here for decades passing batons on to one another to strengthen the community, and that partnership was event with a lot of people in the room, and i am grateful you took the time to be here. with some renewed vigor, some renewed enthusiasm that may be just this time, maybe this time

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things can change with a multi agency approach, not just with the redevelopment agency, but building on our capacity within the city's families and leveraging resources, really the spirit of our time, not just now accepting the we do not have the resources to make an impact. the framework of the partnership was a framework in recognizing that one of the greatest strengths of the city is our artistic integrity that really is the foundation for what is so good in life about san francisco and how that is fully expressed in each of verse neighborhood by the contributions -- diverse neighborhoods by the contributions of people that live here, that make their home here and make their lives in the

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context of their contribution to the cultural heritage and history of our city and that artistic expression, and as the centerpiece of any successful economic revitalization in cities across the country, it is a vibrant art form. it is a real commitment. [applause] so we have spent a great deal of time really analyzing how we can build on that and analyzing how we can make appropriate investments, and i will talk about the arts budget, and i will give you a sense of what we are valuing in this budget and how we believe we can aspire to the framework of economic growth and revitalization. this multi agency effort has been advanced not just by city departments representatives but by community leaders. so many wonderful things have

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happened that we are starting to pull them together. one of them is the remarkable effort under way is through the better market street project, where there is a real commitment to a improving the realm, a focus on more reliable transit. to remove at least 150 cars. it turns out that was the number of cars every hour or so that has been redirected, particularly going eastbound into the market quarter -- corridor, and the numbers bear out that we are moving in the right direction. there has been a chance to enhance our biking efforts and new pylons that are out there and all the other enhancements that are under way.

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and commitment that is represented by this budget to completely repave market street. that is about the size of some states budget. this is not your average repaving project with all that heavy transit that needs to be included, so we have to make an investment so we are ready to go in making sure we wisely appropriate are dollars so in 2013 the project is fully complete. we focus on small businesses and investing in small businesses. we put together a small business revolving loan fund, which to the extent people do not know about it is beyond me, provides micro loans. we have a dozen companies taking advantage of it. we want to enhance the revolving loan fund with the new and $11 million cultural loan fund that we are going to target in this

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community, up to $2 million in loans that will be made available in literally two weeks to the mayor's office that will focus on the tender line and the central market area. these are loans you can get at 3% to 6% interest rates. it will focus on fifth street to 10th street and also focus on the tender line on areas around larken. the only criteria is that for every $50,000 you take out in a small business loan, we need to measure that you would have a please created one job, which seems incredibly modest, so it is not a very high bar in terms of eligibility, get to make a commitment you simply have to demonstrate you are -- yet to make a commitment, you simply have to demonstrate your

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commitment. this will be on line in a couple weeks and will build on the other loan program that has successfully been advanced that needs to be marketed. we are also committing to a series of new art fairs, a weekly art market, new arts festival that will be advancing the summer concert series, which i think is going to be a huge success and the immediate arab. -- area. we are going to have feared the new officers. they are going to be housed full time, so rather than having police officers come from the district station, they will be coming right from the community. we are talking about the ultimate community policing. 30 new beat officers. we are ready to roll the out in the next few months. we have some new community

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districts safety officers, and we are going to build on some of the great work that has been done. he is doing great work on the tenderloin with the of town tenderloin historic district -- uptown tenderloin historic district. gooit is an incredible history t should be shared with the rest of the world. as well as the new history museum that will be built in the tenderloin. these are some of the things that happened again. it is everything i believe remains challenging about the city, the conditions that are going to be affected by decisions. we are not going to accept the

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conditions as our future, because we are going to build on community activism and trying to get these things done. i hope to see support from the planning commission for a retail development just down the block between fifth street and sixth street at city place, and i see a couple of planning commissioners. i want you to take a a good look of that project, and hopefully you will be supported. all of some of the good things that are taking place, improve -- including taking advantage of the store front, this extraordinary program that i think has made a real impact, it has been replicated across the city, the new community districts that have taken place. all these programs that are going to make real enhancements in the neighborhood.

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now to the task at hand the biggest budget deficit in our history. we had $2.2 million when we started. we held off the temptation to spend more money and to radar rainy day reserve, and we worked at a deliberate to witter that budget deficit down to $482.7 million, so what i will offer today is against the backdrop of a $483 million shortfall. the worst economic recession since the great depression, state cuts the likes of which we could not imagine, let alone have struggled to even relate to, and the federal government that is still working through what it is going to do next, and

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a lot of uncertainty around some of the federal stimulus money and a lot of uncertainty about whether or not those commitments can continue in the years to come, so that required a new approach, a different kind of relationship in terms of seeking advice and being inspired by the will of ingenuity and willingness to find solutions. these town hall meetings were very different from a lot of once in the past. you can do have a pretty good sense of where they are in terms of the issues. instead, we decided to go out and randomly sampled folks like you would of public opinion poll and get folks to show up for a town hall meeting we had in february, and we did and online interactive town hall where people would vote, and we got a lot of feedback from that, and then we did the first online budget we have ever done.

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we got 24,000 people. rachel gordon was kind enough to host that town hall. i think it was 2 plus hours of unfiltered dialogue with real folks engaging in a different approach. i did another series of town halls down in west portal to get feedback from folks, and we put together an employee site which calls for improvements, and we got over 500 specific recommendations, and just briefly, there were a couple of wonderful ones, and this is a

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budget where there are no grand ideas, and there is no idea that just solves the problem. there are hundreds of ideas, including an idea from dave. you are right in front of me. this poor guy has been struggling for years to be recognized, and finally through this interactive web site, he alone is responsible, because those wages and benefits do not necessarily add up to savings, but they are close. when he said, why do we spend this money on car washing we never thought about our car washing contract, -- this money on car washing? we never thought about our car washing contract, and we cut that in half. just because of his one idea, we saved $75,000. [applause]

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i do not know if johnson is here, but now he goes, what is up with all this music, and who plays the music gets somebody somebody has not thought of. it turns out we spend money to be placed on hold, which is not an enjoyable experience, and his idea is modest, but it is not insignificant, it saves $10,800. we have others that promoted selling off surplus equipment, all kinds of ideas -- hundreds of recommendations, and others said, it is about time we change our public transit. somebody said, i was in new york, and they are selling t- shirts.

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they wanted to sell some t- shirts and get the city in that business. we loved that idea. this just gives you a sense of some of the employers. other reforms -- the two-year budget we are very proud of. then rosenfield had his vision of creating a framework in which he came up with a recommendation. i thank david chiu for helping to process five. -- process that. we have included financial plans for the first time, that we move to adopt a different framework in terms of some medium-range

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strategic planning. we put together the framework. good thank you to the board for supporting this. let's not put something on the ballot that takes this away, because it was such a great idea, build on our rainy day reserve that is more robust and more able to deal with economic conditions. we finally have that framework for the budget. now we have to have the framework. do not forget, it is a pay-as- you-go, which means you are going to spend money, which means of offsetting cuts are finding revenue. these are important reforms that are taking shape in our city that i think deserve some attention. the budget has a framework of priorities. we wanted to do our best to

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protect our core services, our social safety net worth. we wanted to do our best. look at ways. liggett in efficiency. we can do more on inefficiency. -- look at inefficiency. we can do more about inefficiency. we need to invest in our infrastructure, create jobs, and we wanted to make sure we were going ofafter all the federal funding we could as well as state resources, private sector resources. we began the process early. we did not wait until the end of the fiscal year, and we manage more effectively in a way that has substantially enhance our ability to balance a budget without draconian cuts. that is a very subjective

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statement, because if you were cut, it is a draconian cut, and if it is only $10 cut, you would complain it was draconian, though most would claim otherwise. we are trying to avoid the cataclysmic expectations that some had believed and some have argued was inevitable in this budget, and we will get to how and why and a moment. how did we get there? first, we engage our public employees. i have said this publicly and privately. i must say this more than i s ay anything else, how lucky we are in san francisco to have enlightened employee unions. i am not saying that because we always agree. i am not saying that because

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they love the opportunity to spend time in the mayor's office working throughways, but at the end of the day common they set up yet again, -- end of today, they stepped up again, and if they had not done it, it would have been different. we would have given it on a friday and hope no one would pay attention. now i can say on a tuesday after the holiday is done, so it gives people the chance to look at it. this was their agreement to confession. there was nothing reported for the was not reported that will come back to haunt us in a few years. this was an honest assessment of the challenge and an honest commitment to step up to the plate and try to protect vital services and to do our best to

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reduce the need to increase layoffs. we were able to significantly not only get support from labor representatives, but from the rank and file, and i am proud of this because the concessions are two-year confessions. i does give you the general fund concessions, but over two years , public employees gained back over a quarter of a billion dollars, and i think that deserves a round of applause, because they need to be you recognize. -- to be recognized. it is an extraordinary thing. contrast that to any big city in the united states of america. it was not easy, but it was because of the leadership that we are where we are today. that was the most important

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thing we could have done and the most important thing we did. i mentioned we made some tough choices that helped a reduction in the overall budget deficit. i talked about managing more aggressively. we took last year's budget, and some people thought that was great, but we manage the budget over the last number of months -- 11 months, and over $64 million we were able to carry ford from last year's budget to help us offset -- forward from last year's budget to help us offset that. that was $34 million more. $64 million in carryover funds. how did we do that? we reduced by $17.7 million. we had a strong hiring fees,

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where we actually had a team and my budget director -- to actually find out on every request the position. it did not make a lot of folks have been. i get it, but we needed to do that so we could nail the problem and save jobs. we did the math on that. have we not have a hiring freeze, we would have had an additional 193 layoffs. it is critical. it is essential. the budget should not be managed once a year. it needs to be managed once a day. we asked departments to make a media and budget cuts, not just some it budget cuts, but how many of those -- not just submit a budget cuts, but how many of those meetings did we have?

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they were not easy, but we got a lot of the work done, and because we made an immediate decisions, we were able to address the shortfall. we leveraged state and federal dollars. i will talk about that in a moment. $88 million we leverage from the state. of the san francisco, $26.7 million we were able to leverage. -- healthy san francisco, 26 for $7 million we were able to leverage. the money is always out there if you are creative and willing to try new things. we have remarkable reforms. i have got to tell you one of the guys we are most proud of, we have taken some heat unfairly. that is my former chief of staff' who has seen a lot of

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strong support from labor and work with labor to come up with a remarkable and create a framework to complete the revitalize our recreation system. it is always focus a little more on the park and not enough on the rec system. it is going to increase the number of programming by 20,000 hours, which is amazing. you save money. there are creative ways of doing things differently. it is not all easy, and folks will pick and choose what they want to focus on, but at the end of today, real people are going to want opportunities to get service, more than even last year when we have more money to spend than this year.

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i did not find it that offensive that he is doing bike rentals. i think it is a good thing. i do not find it offensive that he wants to do an antique market. that is a healthy thing, and we thank you for your support. that is going to generate hundreds of thousands into the system. i think you understand this. you got a sense that we can raise more revenue and put out a culture. we focus on contract savings. this was important to labor. that is just being more aggressive in terms of our material supplies, cellphone usage, etc. we continue to do our best.

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we still have too many cars under management, and we are going to dramatically decrease the number of vehicles in the system. we are going to decrease by $1.6 million, the number of cellphones the city. software licensing, we have new enterprise agreements. we have all new reform framework through the committee on information technology, nine new projects consolidating i.t. project 3 and one of these plans will save $5 million -- project. one of these plans will save $5 million in 18 months. our travel budget was cut, for

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some significantly. for some it was difficult to convince them they should not be travelling. office supplies, we reduced our purchases by $3.1 million. we also made some staff reductions, and this was not easy, but it was a lot better than we expected. one of the agreements we made is that we would have the number of positions that would be eliminated -- we would cap the number of positions that would be eliminated. with this budget, we are looking at about 350, and we think we can get that down. we came in under the cap. we addressed the issue of managers, because we agreed that

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we needed to do more with managers commo. we made some choices that are reflected in this. 993 positions that are reduced in this budget, a number that gets more attention than it deserves. that puts our total number of positions at the lowest level they have been since 1998. we still have a lot of city employees. that number changes every day, and it gives you a sense that whatever we have done we are back to where we were in 1998.

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the chief of staff gave up wage concession. i did the same on top of not taking that wage. we reduced the size of all employees by 15.8%. since i have become mayor, we have reduced it by 25%. overall, the number of positions redos to provide a framework of -- positions reduced provided a framework of savings. i am trying to give you a sense of how we got there. there are some controversial proposals here. many said you have seen, many that i know are difficult to embrace, but are important to have a debate about --

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particularly when you consider what else we might have to do, but i want you to know those you are familiar with have been placed in this budget. there are no new surprises. we look for creative new revenue, and here is the controversy. when i am looking at some of the cuts that were offered to me in the department of human services that i did not want to make, and i want to go through this for months, and i have worked on this more than anything i have ever done in public life. i have been working on this every single day for almost a year, and i went back and forth because i know the supervisors cannot stand